Shimon Avny | Shirley Egozi | Dan Birenboim | Camilla Blachmann Udsholt | Tzvi Ben Aretz | Michal Ben-Zeev | Chanchal Banga | Orna Bromberg | Arie Berkowitz | Michal Gavish | Roy Givati | Hadar Gad | Neta Gidalia | Michal Goldman | Nurit Gur Lavy | Dalit Gilboa | Tsuki Garbian | Adva Drori | Jonathan Hirschfeld | Sandra Zemor | Gali Timen | Nira Tessler | David Tartakover | Amnon Yuhas | Tali Navon | Ruth Norman | Miri Nishri | Shy Abady | Paula Elion | Moshe Amar | Dalit Proter | Daniel Sergio Chertkoff | Avraham Kan Malakmadze | Dan Reisner | Ohad Shaaltiel | Hanan Shlonsky | Dede | Latzi

Thirty nine artists create money in a group exhibition closing the fifth year of Zadik Gallery – Art Within Reach.

17300 years to Lascaux cave paintings,
5000 years to the invention of money as a convenient goods exchange method.
3492 years to the “Golden Calf”, the statuesque sin where the Israelites preferred the materialistic, wealth and Mammon over the spiritual.
2500 years to the invention of metal coins: silver and gold.
2080 years to Gaius Cilnius Maecenas – prominent Roman whose name represents a wealthy individual supporting artists.
1882 to Church patronage – commissioning and financing artwork for ritualistic purposes.
1950 years to the use of paper for exchange and credit.
614 years to the world’s first exchange in Antwerp.
574 years to the Medici, Renaissance art patrons, who changed the status of art: from a tool for the Church to a source of spiritual, esthetic and secular pleasure.
237 years to the establishment by the Rothschilds of the world’s first international bank and bonds.
222 years to the creation of Wall Street.
215 years to Francisco Goya’s Los Caprichos describing “the innumerable foibles and follies…deceitful practices which custom, ignorance or self-interest have made usual.” The initiation of personal-political artistic-statement. Liberation from the patron and market forces.
152 years to Honoré Daumier’s The Third Class Carriage focusing on the miserable reality of struggling classes.
103 years to Wassily Kandinsky’s Improvisations and Compositions lauding, independent of traditional academia, research, concept and abstraction.
103 years to František Kupka’s silver etching series equating money to abomination, a prostitute and a rogue ruler.
83 years to Salvador Dalí’s work placing the artist’s spirit, imagination, dreams and subconscious in center-stage.
64 years to the invention of the credit card.
24 years to the sale of Vincent Van Gogh’s Doctor Gachet for a fantastic $82.5 million. The artist who in his lifetime never exhibited in a gallery or museum, not to mention sold a work of art. This launched an era where art became a profitable collector’s item, a status symbol traded to the highest bidder.
14 years to Woody Allen’s Small-Time-Crooks describing the unrestrained passion of the rich for the status provided by art.
8 years to Leumi Bank’s “Secret Art” aiming: “to give young the opportunity to emerge into the public conscience, giving them a foothold in the Israeli Art world.”
6 years to Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God – the most expensive modern artwork –an 18th-century human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless diamonds.
5 years to Zadik Gallery outlining its vision of bringing art within reach.
3 years to the social protest in Israel.
1 month to the sale of IDB’s art collection, as part of the conglomerate’s liquidation, for an estimated $2 million.

Art and money are interwoven in a relationship of admiration and disgust. Financially dominant financiers strive to attain cultural superiority. Money enables them to purchase and dictate spiritual and esthetic values. The collections of Mecenate, Medici, Carnegie, Guggenheim, Morgan and Mann have endowed humanity with eternal treasures.
The artists view themselves free to create and express with passion yearning, insights, thoughts, imagination, protest, love and hatred, independent of financiers, but cannot exist without the financial resource.
The Money exhibition represents artists’ ambivalent relationships towards money:
Avny, Gavish, Gad, Shaaltiel and Shlonsky place the coin and the banknote in center-frame. Alone or as a group money returns to its initial, innocent and passion free status.
The figures on the coins and banknotes attract Bromberg, Garbian, Norman and Abady. Bromberg immortalizes women, Garbian rulers, Norman intellectuals and Abady those absent from the pages of history.
Self-portraits by Proter, Chertkoff and Reisner, accessorized with money, enable them to express their disgust from their status as artists dependent upon it.
The downtrodden, prostitutes, Moshe Silman alive and dead, and foreign workers are at the center of work by Birenboim, Ben Zeev, Banga, Berkowitz, Goldman and Navon. Together with Egozi’s rich real-estate, Kan’s Federman family and Dan Hotel, and Hirschfeld’s nouveau-riche chandelier, reflect the unravelling extremes of Israeli society.
Latzi’s pulsating purse, Gilboa’s empty radiant purse and Tessler’s loaded purse are an ode to emptiness.
Gur Lavy uses “Adam Smith-The Money Game” as a platform for flower drawings and subconscious diagrams, Givati draws the ultimate stone sculpture, balanced on a single Shekel coin, Blachmann’s dozens of eyes urge to remove the gaze from the money and Ben-Aretz redesigns the tree-of-life.
Mountains, sky, Moses and the Israelites are much larger than the “Golden Calf” drawn by 10 year old Tartakover. In-contrast, Zemor complains the sale of the Cohen blessing to the people, as a silver, messianic donkey arises into Gidalia’s neglect.
Elion transforms Snow-white into a whore as Amar dips the silver-boy in tar.
Paradoxical combination of materials causes alienation as Yuhas draws a smoking factory on a foundation of glittering silver, and Nishri wraps her brush in a Dollar bill. Timen hopes that the love between a father and daughter, in a photograph, cannot be bought, Dede casts an Ounce of gold in concrete and Drori exclaims on a felt scarf that all artifacts in this exhibition are for sale.
Money – the blessing and the curse.

Curator: Hana Coman
Closing: 02.08.14